More Tips to Keep You Social Media Savvy

 It’s a new year and that means new opportunities to get your work seen, whether it’s in a gallery or exhibition – or online. If you’re a frequent user of social media, you’ve likely seen our posts about what AWA members are doing: their latest works, awards, press coverage and other accomplishments. Many of these posts are ones the members have created and posted themselves – we simply share it on our social media channels. Here are some tips to help AWA get the word out about your work.

Add AWA’s promotions email account to your mailing lists. If you send out press releases or other updates on a regular basis, add promotions@americanwomenartists.org to your mailing list. That’s the dedicated email for AWA member social media requests/information.

Bookmark our member promotion request form in your website browser. The link is: tinyurl.com/AWAmemberpromo This form is a great way to send along anything that has a long lead time, like a workshop you are teaching or media/press coverage. Please note that promotional requests are queued based on time sensitivity and may take a few weeks to be written and scheduled.

Check your hashtags in your social media posts for correct formatting. Using hashtags on social media is optional, but many social media users follow particular hashtags to see what kinds of content is being posted and it’s often how people find new accounts to follow. Tagging on social media – especially hashtagging – can be tricky because it requires a certain format that flies in the face of proper punctuation & grammar. Hashtags “break” as soon as a space or punctuation mark is included, so the format is a line of text without any breaks. Insert a space between separate tags.

Incorrect format: #american women artists #oil painters of america #oil on linen #it’sallaboutart

Correct format: #americanwomenartists #oilpaintersofamerica #oilonlinen #itsallaboutart

Pro tip: make a “cheat sheet” that has all the hashtags relevant to your work using a notes application on your smartphone or computer. That way you can copy and paste the list into your posts and simply delete the ones you don’t need. Examples of descriptive hashtags: #oilpainting #watercolor #stilllife #florals #landscapepainting #portraitpainting #figurative #bronze #ceramics

AWA has certain hashtags it uses on social media to categorize and sort its content, so you may want to add these to your cheat sheet, too: #americanwomenartists #amwomenartists #womensculptors #womenartists

Tag AWA in your social media posts. This blog post includes instructions on how to tag AWA on social media, whether it’s Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.

As always, if you have any questions about AWA’s social media, shoot Corinne an email at promotions@americanwomenartists.org